


it's what we do

by Pixielle



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: (Ch 1 has a very short description of violence against a child- Max in this case), Canonical Child Abuse, Comatose Billy Hargrove, Domestic Violence, Fix-It, Found Family, Human Experimentation, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical, Mild Blood, Neil Hargrove is His Own Warning, POV Alternating, Post-Stranger Things 3, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, it's really abt love, it's truly not all doom and gloom i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25783345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixielle/pseuds/Pixielle
Summary: Steve realises he’s in love with Billy the moment he sees his body hit the cold tile of Starcourt Mall; body open and broken like a doll discarded by a destructive toddler.He appreciates the irony, and absolutely nothing else about the situation.-(aka, a post-s3 Billy recovery fic in which some lost souls figure out where they’re truly meant to be. here be: found family, recovery, emotional support systems, etc.)
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Billy Hargrove, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Steve Harrington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	1. always another, wound to discover

**Author's Note:**

> Music-  
> Title: It's What We Do - Pink Floyd  
> Opening Lyrics: Everything You Want - Vertical Horizon  
> \- Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd  
> \- Man in Motion - John Parr

_**** _

_He's everything you want_   
_He's everything you need_

_He's everything inside of you_   
_That you wish you could be_

_He said all the right things_   
_At exactly the right time_

_But he meant nothing to you_   
_And you don't know why_

_///_

_Somewhere there's speaking_   
_It's already coming in_   
_Oh and it's rising at the back of your mind_

_You howl and listen_   
_Listen and wait for the_   
_Echoes of angels who won't return_

_You're waiting for someone_   
_To put you together_   
_You're waiting for someone_   
_To push you away_

_There's always another, wound to discover_   
_There's always something more you wish he'd say_

_Now you're here and you don't know why_

===

After Billy is physically stabilized, comatose, and can leave the main hospital, the government transfers him back to Hawkins Lab. 

The space they clean up in the once-abandoned lab for observation isn’t big. Just one little corner at the back of the building, on the main floor. It looks like any other hospital, white floors, white walls, all tiled over and painted with thick coats to cover the blood stains that wouldn’t come out after sitting for months. There’s no hint at the history buried there, the pain woven deep into the fabric of the building.

In fact, at any given moment, the only accessible area is just one waiting room, one corridor, and one doctor.

One nurse at one desk and one chair in the single corridor, permanently stationed outside of one always-open door. 

One sterile white room. One IV tower. One ventilator. One hospital bed. One vital signs monitor, with one heartbeat steadily, slowly, beeping through the near silence.

One patient.

-

It’s one month to the day before Steve finds out that he’s been cleared by the government to go see Billy. He’s… happy. Of course he’s happy. But there’s this little niggling feeling at the back of his mind that he shouldn’t go in. Shouldn’t mess with fate again.

Max goes five days a week, if not every day. 

Steve will occasionally take the drive out and drop her off if her mother is at work that afternoon. This arrangement mostly came about because, a few days after Billy was moved to the lab, he came across her riding her skateboard down the highway and put his foot down immediately. 

It’s not like Cherry Lane out to the lab was a long distance, Max’s house was far out in the suburbs, all of the houses just spread out enough that you got the illusion of privacy. You could ignore some raised voices, repressed screams, even errant bumps coming from a neighbor’s house in the evening with almost nothing weighing on your conscience.

He’s seen enough true crime documentaries on late night HBO to not doubt that even in a small town like Hawkins (that’s regularly tormented by interdimensional monsters) also no doubt has its share of human villains, of all kinds.

So there were no questions, no if’s, and’s, or but’s. 

No skating on the highway. 

When they part, Max always shoves the Beemer’s door closed with an emphatic push and a smile to Steve that drops immediately, before flicking her Hawkins Middle ID up to the extremely bored security guard at the gate, every time, like clockwork, like he didn’t have her face memorized the second day she showed up. He doesn’t even try to hide the stack of Sports Illustrated magazines on the desk in front of him anymore. 

They don’t even make him press the button to the gate, she skates up the drive and across the short veranda to the heavy door and shoots one more look back at Steve as she kicks her board up into her hands. It’s accompanied by a nod, resilient and present. 

He watches the out of place fire of her hair disappear into the bright white hallway, safe, before throwing his car into reverse and drives away from there like a bat out of hell back to Loch Nora or Family Video or Robin’s.

Anywhere but there, really.

He knows it makes him a coward that after getting the letter in the mail after a week of drop-offs he still doesn’t tell Max he can go in. He doesn’t have a ton of trauma with the lab itself, he hadn’t even gone in once when it was still functioning at full capacity. But it really represents, for all of them, this iconography of their suffering and pain, something that grew in bits and pieces as he learned more of El’s life and story.

A few days after he got the clearance letter, he took a drive with Max and El to a mall about 30 miles out on Highway 31 towards Indianapolis, to get some new supplies and clothes for their “Freshman year”. The normalcy was something he wanted for them, even though El wouldn’t be going to school. It also was something that he wanted to do for Joyce and Susan, to take a little bit off their shoulders with everything that had gone on this summer. 

===

About a week after Billy… died (because he did die, his heart stopped beating), Max couldn’t contain the scream that had been building in her throat. Years of frustration and flat out **anger** boiling just beneath her vocal cords.

It started with the dissonance to Neil’s aura when Dr. Owens called him after Billy had been gone for a whole week, assuring him that his son was now stable but comatose. It was all an act, she could see it on his face in her mind, terse “mhmm’s” the only thing he said as Dr. Owens spoke for a while longer.

“And this is government related? You’re holding him without my consent?”

Max slid along the inside of her door, feet falling near silently, but she knows he can see her shadow move along the floor of the hallway. Max can hear Dr. Owens try to respond about something regarding confidentiality, but Neil cuts him off. His voice is firm, angry, and the vitriol grows as he continues to speak. It spits out of him like a venomous snake, and it makes tears sprout in Max’s tear ducts but they’re not from sadness. They’re from anger.

“Then take him as a fucking ward of the state, he turns 18 in less than two months. I don’t care what he did to get himself in this mess, that’s his problem. You should’ve left him in the rubble of that fucking mall because I’m not paying a goddamn **cent** in medical bills.”

The phone is slammed down into the cradle at the same moment Max’s door hits the wall of the hallway.

And Max, she snapped. 

Screamed into Neil’s face about how horrible he’d been to Billy his whole life, that he made the two of them into angry broken people, and if he was worth anything he would be at his bedside, with her, atoning and begging the broken visage of his son for forgiveness for his actions.

The backhand she got for it sent her into the hallway wall. It was so forceful her neck snapped back and a picture frame shattered on impact. It came free from the wall and hit her on the back of the head on her way down to the hardwood floor.

The front door slammed, but she didn’t flinch where she laid. She just took a breath and reached back for the frame where it settled against her skull.

-

Her mother found her when she got home from work, nearly an hour later, dark clotted blood coating to Max’s auburn hair and slow, silent tears still falling onto broken glass as she stared at the picture. It was a generic Sears Christmas photoshoot, from when they were still in California. When they were still trying to appear like a compressed Brady Bunch. Still trying at all.

Billy was 14 in it, baby fat softening the features of his face, but you could hardly tell from his upright military posture and set jaw, curls cropped far, far shorter than they were when he died. A faint grimace wrapped around his face as he stood between Susan and Max, arms folded behind his back. It was one of the only photos of all of them together in existence at all. And now it would be the last.

Seeing it tearstained with a fat drop of blood in the upper corner, which had spread to obscure Neil’s face, she finally got it. She understood.

Max clenched the 4x6, now out of its broken frame, in her hand as she was carted into the ambulance. She laid on her right side, paramedics behind her tending to her head wound and doing preliminary eye tests for concussions. To the sounds of sirens and her head still pounding as blood flooded against the clot of her wound, she folded and ripped the leftmost quarter of the photo away. 

While her mother was distracted answering questions, Max leant over and slipped the rest of the photo into her purse, safe, while she balled up the torn off bloodied piece in her hand. When she was lifted out of the ambulance, she let her hand fall casually towards the edge of the gurney, dropping the shred of photograph to the parking lot of the hospital when no one was looking. Tiny and insignificant. She watched it get ground beneath the wheels of a passing car, gone from her sight, forever.

-

She was cleared and diagnosed with a grade 1 concussion and mild whiplash within the hour. Her head wound was stitched shut and wrapped up with a flat ice pack sandwiched between the layers of gauze wrap and a short soft-foam cervical brace around her neck to stabilize her for a week or two. 

Both her and her mother rode the elevator up to the ICU. They could only stay for a minute, one of Chief Hopp- no, a Hawkins Deputy, was waiting down in the lobby for them.

Max didn’t hesitate, taking his hand and sitting down near the head of Billy’s bed, and bent down to his ear, whispering to him (despite the fact that she knows her mother can’t hear her from the door over the noise of the respirator and all of the other equipment surrounding him).

“I only made it a week without you, dickhead.” Her breath wavers as she tries to start again, “A fucking week.” Max shakes her head a little bit in disbelief and almost laughs at the genuine pain it makes her feel.

“Thank you for saving me for all those years. I’m sorry for making it so hard on you. When you’re ready, we’ll all be here and you **will** be safe from him.” 

She didn’t know if she meant the Mindflayer or Neil. 

Probably both.

A final tear tracks out of Max’s sore, bloodshot eyes and falls into Billy’s flat, greasy curls where they lay limp against the pillow. Her breath hitches and surprises her, but she holds it and takes a pair of deep breaths as she stares at how small, how defenseless Billy looked in that hospital bed. It makes Max clench at his hand tighter.

She had never described Billy as defenseless in her life before these past two weeks and she **hated** it. But he was, all along. A human person just like her. But more than that, he had no one when he needed to be saved the most. 

Never again.

\- 

Susan wraps her arms around Max as they walk through the halls, commenting about how cold she was. Max’s expression doesn’t change, she doesn’t really feel cold (but with all of the adrenaline finally exiting her nervous system she might be). But she does lean into her mother as she makes eye contact with Deputy, no, Chief Powell, across the lobby. He stands and removes his hat as he tilts his head towards the cop car waiting out front.

One more deep breath, filling her lungs as much as she could.

For Billy, who couldn’t.

Because she was done crying.

It was time to be strong.

===

After Steve picked El up from the Byers’ house she sat in the passenger seat next to him, smiling and nodding when he said they just needed to go and pick up Max and they’d be on their way. But as they got closer and closer, dark trees whipping past them as she realized what picking up Max entailed, he could feel the tension start to roll off of El in waves. The tight, circular stress compressed down on them, until it forced the air out of his lungs in a concentrated burst. El looked over at him, eyes hard and unsoftened from a lifetime of enculturation, just darting around in a contained but scared way, not unlike a wild animal. 

So, he offered his hand, fingers splayed and palm open across the center console. El’s eyes darted to it and watched for a second, like it was going to snap around her hand like a bear trap. And he got it, he understood. But still, he left it there. While patience wasn’t always his strong suit, that was something he focused on now, especially with the kids. 

And soon, El’s fingers slid along his, so tiny and clammy with stress and chilled over from the aggressive air conditioning keeping the mid-August heat at bay. He slowly closed his fingers around hers, otherwise not moving at all, and gently cleared his throat. El flinched minutely, if he hadn’t been touching her he wouldn’t have noticed, but she didn’t say anything.

“The only people in that building now are two medical staff working to keep Billy alive. A nurse with no knowledge of what happened with the Upside Down and Dr. Owens, the doctor who almost died helping Will and Hopper trusted. No one that will ever hurt you, not in a million years.”

Steve looks over to El as he slowly drives up behind the gate, and puts the car in park. The guard is absent today, which isn’t unusual because Owens doesn’t have anyone scheduled to “visit” Billy (aka checkups and tests of the Upside-Down related variety), and Steve’s thankful for it because the lack of people around seems to help El breathe a little bit easier. It really does just look like an abandoned building with the one tiny section lit. 

It disgusts Steve to imagine the people who orchestrated her life, just being treated like a lab rat for the scientific amusement of the real animals. Who could look at a baby, or a child, and see that. 

Only a monster.

The breaths she’s taking are finally slowing, but the grip on his hand tightens, pulses gently. And Steve didn’t expect her to speak when he looked over at her, but she does, quiet, a whisper on the wind, almost taken away by the current of the aircon.

“How… how is Billy?”

Steve can basically feel his innards turn over, guilt filling up his stomach as he pictures the letter shoved into the top drawer of his bedside table. He should go in. He can, she probably could too if she wanted to with just one check in with Dr. Owens in his office situated right near the front door. Owens knows how Billy saved 011, Hopper’s girl, from certain death. It would be nothing. He’d probably just nod at her, despite the governmental implications.

Not today.

“Steve?”

“I don’t really know, kiddo,” His hand squeezes around hers once, “I haven’t… I haven’t been in to see him, yet.” He cringes the tiniest bit, and she catches him like a fish in an eagle’s talons. He can see it in her eyes.

And Steve really doesn’t want to talk about his issues right now with El, with the availability of seeing Billy so new to begin with. Maybe it is wrong to want to wait, there’s nothing for him to be scared of, Billy’s literally comatose. 

But he’s scared. At this stage, Steve can admit when he’s scared. And he is. 

“Please don’t tell Max.”

“Wait. Does that mean you can, but you have no-”

But Max, his skateboarding angel, appears out of the door in the distance, board getting set on the ground from where it was tucked beneath her arm, and Steve points up at her direction with his free hand.

“Ah, there’s Max, she’ll be able to give you your B-Billy update!”

And El’s mouth snaps shut at his nervousness and it makes Steve feel a little bad because he didn’t want to shut her down right now. But she’s always been better with body language than with speech, and Steve’s body language is screaming at her that there’s something more to this. So she drops it as Max opens the back driver’s side door and throws her skateboard into the footwell of her seat. 

The girls greet each other with positive greetings as Max gets into the car herself, her little backpack full of supplies for when she gets bored in the hospital room and the current book she’s reading to Billy also getting thrown to the floor with her skateboard. Max leans forward and puts her hand on El’s shoulder, rubbing her thumb across her skin there, “Thanks for coming to get me out here, I know…” Max stops for a second as she looks back up to the building looming in front of them and just says simply, “I know.” 

And El’s nodding as her right hand comes up to pat Max’s. “We’re friends. Of course.” 

And it’s that simple. Steve’s a little amazed. She’s one of the bravest people Steve has ever met. And he’s met a lot of brave people over the past few years. 

Lost a lot of them, too.

The thought makes Steve squeeze at El’s hand involuntarily, and when El looks at him his sad smile comes onto his face slowly, eyes unable to hide the disconsolation inside him. But El just nods at him, and brings their hands up between them, moving them together like “Duh, Steve, you too!” and he can’t stop his smile from growing and rolling his eyes. El squeezes Steve’s hand back one last time, looking up at him with a mirthful expression at his real smile, before clambering over the center console to sit in the back with Max. 

Steve nearly grasps the Mind Flayer wound on her shin as he helps her over, it’s just above the hemline of her capris and just healed enough to be open to the air, and it jostles him a little bit internally as he pulls back his hand. He didn’t mean to. But El doesn’t notice, just kicks a little bit as she lands in the back seat. Makes him want to touch around his eye, still yellowed out with bruising and half healed cuts making him look a little rough, despite the swelling having gone down in the past two or so weeks.

Steve watches in the rearview mirror as they both settle themselves in, prods her to buckle up like Max did, and finally pulls away from the (ever-looming) building. They had been parked there five minutes at most, but it felt like a decade to Steve’s heart.

-

He drives for a little while, silent and recovering, as the girls talk about plans for where they want to go in the mall, what they need, where they want to go for dinner, on and on, but at a certain point Steve can’t wait to ask any more.

“Hey Max, El wanted to know how Billy was doing this week but I didn’t know what to say, so...”

And Steve doesn’t hint at having gotten clearance yet to Max, and El does stare him down half-intimidatingly in the rearview for it, but he just gives some stern eye contact and a minute shake of his head back at her. She backs down without a fight. Max doesn’t really notice more than it being a blip, she’s the tiniest bit suspicious but doesn’t outright question anything when she speaks.

“Well…” Her eyes drop to look to the back of Steve’s seat, hand rubbing along her temple for a second, “He’s still completely out. But all the brain stuff has been as normal as they can expect, and he’s responding to external stuff like pain and heat as he should be. They don’t have a good baseline of comparison for something like this with the Upside Down, but Dr. Owens says that compared to similar physical trauma cases he’s doing “extraordinarily,” Her hands come up into air quotes as she speaks, and when she brings them back down El wraps her hands around them, and Max looks at her, “but it’s so hard when it looks like nothing is changing outwardly except for how long his hair is getting…” 

Steve doesn’t mean to laugh but the quiet, awkward chuckle comes out without his permission. His undone hair is the longest it has ever been now too, when it’s wet it brushes along the top of his shoulder blades. He covers the chuckle with a cough as he threads his right hand into the ends of his hair and holds it out for the girls to see, “Hey, that’s good. We’ve got that in common, at least.”

They both laugh back at him and it makes him warm and nostalgic, like maybe it could be that easy. Maybe they could bond over being overgrown mullet twins and almost dying the same day more than once. That’d be nice. Simple.

It’d be like nothing had ever happened between them.

===

They go shopping, and it’s fun. Far more fun than Steve thought it would be, even if he spends 90% of it sitting on a bench outside dressing rooms. He’s glad that the girls get to have some fun, get their minds off of everything for a while. 

It was genuinely entertaining to watch them twirl around to show their outfits to each other like every new pair of jeans made them into a princess in a ball gown. He even hugely cringed and got to put his foot down against one pair of jean shorts that Max wanted.

“You can-NOT get white Daisy Dukes, your mom will hate me if you come home with those.”

“They’re not even that short!”

“You know that doesn’t matter, Max. Put your arms down.”

Max puts her arms down, hunching her shoulders up around her neck to keep the tips of her fingers minutely above the frayed hemline and pretending that that would ever fly with the Hawkins school district. El watches, fascinated and a little confused at the practice.

“Drop your shoulders.”

Her face screws up a little bit at getting called out. Her shoulders relax and her fingertips fall at least three inches below the hemline. Steve just imitates the Jeopardy incorrect answer beep sound (less obnoxiously than he could’ve, to be fair), and says, “If you’d get dress coded for it, it’s a no.”

Max gives a big “UGH” as she turns around and pushes back into the dressing room, the lock sliding closed with more force than necessary. El just looks at him, her owl’s eyes wide.

“Steve, what is “getting dress coded”?”

“IT’S SEXIST BULLSHIT, EL! The guys on the basketball team aren’t coded for their shorts and this year they’re even shorter than these, and...” 

Max continues to talk, and Steve nods supportively as El continues to watch him. A lot of it goes over his head, how does Max know so much about feminist theory at barely fourteen? Maybe it’s a California Thing™? Steve has a feeling he’ll never know.

He tries to dodge when the pair of shorts are aggressively pelted over the top of the cubicle door, but they somehow still land straight onto Steve’s face without Max even being able to see him at all. He almost tips over the rickety bench like a giant dork in his haste to remove them. El giggles noiselessly, her hand pressing onto her mouth to mute the giggles, trying not to interrupt Max. Steve makes a quiet disgruntled noise as he holds the shorts on his lap and peeks around the corner to check on the shop attendants. It’s just bored college students leaning on their arms at the tills with glazed looks in their eyes or looking at their watches, they couldn’t care any less about them. He crosses his legs, folds the shorts, and leaves them on his knee, waiting for Max to come out in her final outfit. Max trails off, distracted with a denim skort that she says has a “weird closure” on the side. 

They sit in relative silence for a moment, just the noises of a few people milling around in the front of the shop. El is done and dressed in her original clothes again, flannel tied around her waist. She’s also swaying a little bit on her feet as she stares at the back of the door where her choices are hanging, trying to pick between three different shirts. Steve’s brow furrows.

“El…” His voice is quiet, like he’s talking to one of his mother’s neglected horses at the stables on the outskirts of town. She turns around, and her face is suddenly unsure and a little... sad? Or maybe just overwhelmed? And Steve is empathetic to a fault (to self destruction, really, but that doesn’t apply here) so he taps the spot on the bench next to him and tilts his head. 

And El doesn’t hesitate, like someone with a life full of socialization would, she just walks over and sits down, leaning into Steve’s side. After another minute she puts her head on his shoulder. Steve wraps his arm around her shoulders and gives her a squeeze before letting the grip go. 

They sit together for a while, El eventually sitting back upright, and Steve is righting the shorts that were sliding off of his lap when he hears Max from behind the door exclaim, “Ah, finally!”

She comes out with a hand on her hip. 

“So, Daaa-ad, is this one okay?” 

She turns in a sarcastic circle in front of them, sticking her arms straight out for emphasis, a tiny self-satisfied grin on her face.

Steve rolls his eyes at the “Dad” comment before he nods his approval of the skort, it was completely fine in terms of length. For all of his insistence at taking them, he really didn’t know much about women’s fashion, not to mention freshman girl fashion. Maybe he should’ve asked Robin to come with… 

Max wore it with a rainbow logo Coca Cola baseball tee tucked in and Steve thought it looked nice, good for summer into fall, maybe with a jean jacket, and he told her that. 

A thoughtful look comes onto her face, “I wonder if Billy would kill me if he knew I borrowed his...”

And for a millisecond the mood turns tense at the reminder. Max flinches and Steve doesn’t know what to say, but El pipes up for the first time since Max emerged from the dressing room. 

“No. He wouldn’t.” Her voice is quiet and worn out, but matter of fact, like it was a serious question that Max actually wanted answered. 

The way Max looks over at her, her blue eyes huge, makes Steve want to cry. 

Max just nods with an airy sigh, “You’re right, El.”

-

The turnaround out of there was pretty quick. El took maybe five seconds maximum actually picking between the three shirts from earlier. It was probably at random now that he thinks about it, but they were all great on her so it probably was fine. He got it.

He paid, the checkout girl gave him a too-big smile and said, “So sweet of you to take your little sisters out shopping!” and he just put on a smile that he hoped looked more real than hers but probably just came across as a bit of a grimace. Not because she insinuated that they were his little sisters, he was beyond fine with that. But he knows that siblings were more than a sore spot for both of them and they were all tapped out.

The three of them practically ran out of the mall to his car.

He was fine with essentially being a chauffeur for the two of them. It felt right. They needed each other. Seeing them side by side with their arms around each other in the backseat makes him see Max sobbing her heart out lying across El’s lap a month ago and he… He hates it. Hates that that’s something they had to experience in their short lives. Hates that they both had terrible, horrible things happen to them on top of that because of mere humans. 

Max has had her hair up in a bun with a ribbon puffing out from it for weeks when she goes out in public. Steve knows it’s because it covers the last of the bandaging there, keeps most people from asking questions that she doesn’t want to answer, even though she had wrinkled her nose when Steve said her hair looked nice.

===

They decided to just stop and get some fast food for dinner as they were all pretty low energy after putting out **normal, normal, normal** all day, and they didn’t really care. 

So Dairy Queen, it was. 

Steve sits and waits for the attendant with his window open, cash in hand, and when the breeze starts up again the strong, affronting scent of hot oil floats out of the restaurant and fills up his nostrils. It wakes him up, makes his senses seem a little less dull. 

The aggressively watered and manicured medians. Gasoline vapours. Blacktop pavement roasting and a little melty as the day’s last dregs of summer sun beats down on it, releasing fumes.

It all makes him nostalgic for a childhood he didn’t have but TV made him want to. 

He recognizes the intro of _“Wish You Were Here”_ when it starts playing on a crackley old radio in the kitchen across from him and it makes him want to laugh. Or cry. Or just bang his head into his steering wheel like he nearly did when he T-boned the Camaro. All are valid options in his mind.

He hasn’t heard this song since Spring, sat in that exact same Camaro. In school, he always got the impression that Billy was exclusively a metalhead, and for the most part he was, but not always. For some reason Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac always made the cut when he was around Steve, too. Steve hadn’t been able to dig in enough to find out why, they weren’t close enough yet, whatever they had was too new, infantile and barely walking.

But it was always the album playing when Billy would lean on the horn outside of Steve’s window in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t do it on the rare nights when Steve’s father’s Audi was in the driveway, it was this unsaid thing. But it made Steve wonder those nights, as he laid in bed with his hands folded beneath his head, if Billy would drive past looking for lights. The Camaro wasn’t exactly silent.

But when he was alone in the house, Steve would run out and slide into Billy’s passenger seat. And ignore the obvious tear trails on Billy’s ruddy cheeks as he pulled a flask of his father’s expensive whiskey out of the pocket of his racer jacket. He’d hand it over within seconds of the brakes squealing them to a stop, noise echoing for what felt like forever through the still frozen-over quarry. He can still see Billy’s indelicate fingers punching at the deck release and flipping the cassette over. 

By the time they got to the actual song " _Wish You Were Here"_ they were both giggly and loosened out in their seats with whiskey pulsing in their veins. Steve had no idea what they had talked about anymore when they were drunk together, most of it just didn’t matter. It was such kid shit looking back on it now after what happened, when they were both hunting for normalcy from two very different but similar evils. Steve truly had no idea what compelled him to forgive Billy for what he did beyond a feeling that he should, for himself, and to not worry about it too much. He wasn’t ever the type to hold a grudge.

But probably because Billy would occasionally smile at Steve in this real genuine way that made a surprised shock run through Steve, just like when Billy got distracted and would shove some fallen hair off of Steve’s forehead with those same fingers. Billy’s apology wasn’t much of an apology the first time it happened, and he never apologised for touching Steve after.

That last time... the last time…

(Nevermind. It was definitely a time to both laugh and cry..)

-

He gets the girls chicken strip baskets with Texas toast and fries because they just flat out said “pick something”, and even he knows pretty much anyone under the age of 16 notoriously will always eat chicken strips. And, like a real dad, makes them really amused when he demands they give up a french fry to him when he reaches back. He wasn’t hungry when he ordered but now he’s suddenly ravenous. Each of the girls sacrifice a triangle half-slice of their toast with the corner dipped in country gravy to him in pity. 

The ride back is pretty uneventful otherwise, after the girls finish eating Max pulls out the book she’s been reading to Billy and starts reading one of the shorter stories for El. It makes Steve a little sleepy, Max seems to be good at reading aloud, and while her voice is engaging, the writing is looping and wide to Steve’s ears. He gets lost in it a while.

-

_"Usually, I'm not terribly gregarious," she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning of the word. I didn't give her a sign, though, one way or the other. "I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face."_

_I said she was right, that I had been feeling lonely, and that I was very glad she'd come over._

_"I'm training myself to be more compassionate. My aunt says I'm a terribly cold person," she said and felt the top of her head again. "I live with my aunt. She's an extremely kind person. Since the death of my mother, she's done everything within her power to make Charles and me feel adjusted."_

_"I'm glad."_

_"Mother was an extremely intelligent person. Quite sensuous, in many ways." She looked at me with a kind of fresh acuteness. "Do you find me terribly cold?"_

_I told her absolutely not--very much to the contrary, in fact. I told her my name and asked for hers. She hesitated. "My first name is Esmé. I don't think I shall tell you my full name, for the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles. Americans so often are, you know."_

_I said I didn't think I would be, but that it might be a good idea, at that, to hold on to the title for a while._

-

Steve had just parked in front of Max’s house as she finished the section, and he couldn’t resist looking up in the rearview and asking, “So what, ‘s she like a princess or something? Seems awfully upright and hoity toity…”

Max’s face split with a grin as she slid the paperback into her backpack and zipped it up, looking almost like she was going to laugh, “Y’know what, Steve? That’s as good a theory as any.” Max gives El a hug and gathers up her bags and skateboard. She shoves her hand into the back of Steve’s hair to mess it up in a way that makes him squawk but also feel some deja vu before she scrambles out of the car and shuts the door.

Max shouts out her “Thanks for taking me!” halfway up the walk when her mother comes out onto the screened in porch and gives her the "use your manners" evil eye, but Max doesn't even turn around. Steve just brings down his window halfway, waving to Susan in a way he hopes seems as genuine as he wants it to be, and blasts his horn as he pulls away from the curb. 

El was already settled in the passenger seat, and after she clicked her seatbelt into place she starts tapping at his right hand. He makes a hand over hand turn onto the little county highway headed out towards the Byers and gives her his hand. 

Evidently this was a thing now. 

It was chill. 

It was fine.

(Steve thought it was a little weird. She didn’t seem to be in any distress or anything.)

But it seemed like El thought it was the most normal thing in the world, so he didn’t burst her bubble, it was a rough day. The balance of trying to get out and be a normal kid paired with the weight of having too much pain and knowledge on your shoulders was something Steve knew all too well.

He just slowly tapped his fingers against hers to the beat of Man in Motion as it quietly started playing on the radio. 

By the middle he was singing, and El was turning the dial up, and by the end she’s shaking with laughter as Steve parks and air guitars as he belts out the last big “ST. ELMO’S FIRE!!”

It’s the best he’s felt in a while, seeing El laughing with her almost snorting, paired only a little bit of guilt. He takes a page out of the Californias’ book and shoves his hand against her curls teasingly.

“Y’okay there, kiddo?”

El turns in her seat to look at Steve, smile wide as she grabs his hand again, clasping both of hers around Steve’s just like she had done to Max earlier that afternoon.

“Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow.”

The almost taunting "nut up or shut up" tone is something he's never heard out of El in the almost year of knowing her and he knows he's gotta talk to Mike about that. 

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll go and see Billy. Tomorrow.”

-

Steve thinks that Billy would be able to appreciate the mood polarity of today.

If he were here.

And Steve wished he was.

Because it would be a hell of a lot easier than doing what he was going to have to do.

Tomorrow.


	2. life's like an hourglass (glued to the table)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tomorrow comes today. 
> 
> The sun rises and streams through his half-closed curtains, like it always does.
> 
> Normally Steve finds comfort in that.
> 
> Today, not so much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took over a month but I'm proud, this chapter is one chunky guy at 10K+ words. When i envisioned where i wanted chapter 2 to end i didn't know it would take that many words, but we're here now.
> 
> intro lyrics and chapter title from: breathe (2 am) by anna nalick! i also listened to a lot of cardigan by taylor swift and pittsburgh by the amity affliction (which are two VERY different songs) while working on this chapter.

///

_May, he turned twenty-one on the base at Fort Bliss_   
_Just a day, he said down to the flask in his fist_   
_Ain't been sober, since maybe October, of last year_

_Here in town, you can tell he's been down for a while_   
_But my God it's so beautiful_   
_When the boy smiles, I wanna hold him_

_There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout_   
_'Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out_   
_And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again_   
_If you only try turning around_

_'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable_   
_And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table_   
_No one can find the rewind button now_   
_So cradle your head in my hands_

_And breathe_   
_Just breathe_

_Oh, breathe_   
_Just breathe_

///

Tomorrow comes today. 

The sun rises and streams through his half-closed curtains, like it always does.

Normally Steve finds comfort in that.

Today, not so much.

And yeah, he’s nervous about seeing Billy. That’s a given. The last time Steve saw him he was lying dead in a pile of black tinted blood after sacrificing himself. It’s normal to be nervous. 

But unless Billy has somehow miraculously started dancing around his hospital room like Grandpa Joe in the past 18 hours, he doesn’t have much of anything to actually be **scared** of.

But really what’s pushing him over the edge is knowing that this is El’s first time back inside the lab since closing the gate almost a year ago. She doesn’t even have Hopper to help her this time.

And Steve doesn’t know what to do about it. Because he can’t be Hopper. He really is still just a kid, this summer has proved that to him more than anything else.

It just sucks. 

-

It’s just before eight by the time he gets everything together and makes the drive out to the Byers. He anxiously ate a peanut butter sandwich that he threw together on the way out of the door. It makes him feel like a dog with his tongue stuck to the roof of its mouth, and when he parks he just takes a minute to sit and unstick it. 

The only car in front of the house today is Joyce’s, Will and Jonathan likely both at tied up with the Wheelers in some way at the moment.

He’s grateful. 

He and Jonathan are on better terms than they’ve ever been, but they’re not necessarily best friends. He honestly wishes that they could be, it would make their ever-intersecting social circles more at ease. He could easily run a car into another at nearly 60 miles an hour to protect them and the kids. Even after going through Starcourt with Jonathan and Nancy, it was still a little bit terser than necessary. 

Steve completely recognized it was such teenage drama bullshit. But that was on par for all of them. That was their normal, their one thing that made them still be anything like real teenagers. An awkward, messy breakup.

Nancy and Jonathan just had their senior year left. Jonathan had secured a full-tuition scholarship from the local Kodak branch for documenting the Starcourt disaster from a survivor’s perspective in the days following, and was in the second round of assessment at NYU for his portfolio. Jonathan constantly assumed that everything was going to go wrong, especially in this case, and while Steve felt for him, he knew objectively that Jonathan was basically a shoe-in.

And Nancy already was deciding if she wanted to exclusively commit to Barnard, a women's college near NYU that she had already been accepted to, or attempt to get into Columbia.

It made Steve tired just thinking about it. 

He danced through high school, didn’t even start thinking about applying until his senior year started and the counselors and his father started jumping down his throat. It wasn’t what he wanted. He knew that much. It was easy agreeing to get a dead end job for now. And look what happened.

For all he felt about the people in his life, good and bad, deep down he was just worn out and world-weary, without ever having to leave the tristate area.

Joyce comes out onto the porch, her hair wrapped up on top of her head and in her pajamas (a t-shirt that’s stretched at the collar and black cut off sweatpants with tan moccasins on her feet) and palming a pack of Camel Lights. When she notices Steve sitting in his car listlessly, her thin hand waves him over, calm smile growing as she sits down on the little wicker loveseat.

And there’s something about Joyce that makes Steve feel safe. Like actually. It’s entirely oxymoronic, if Steve had never known the Byers existed he would be a completely different, and admittedly less scarred, person. But she has this quality about her that draws him in, and he’s over trying to figure out why he cares about the people he does. 

Because entirely regardless of him, Joyce is a good person. A good mom, despite everything. The type who would catch a bug in a jar to release it outside or knock out a wall of her house with an axe in an attempt to save her son. He’s never met a parent that cares about their children, even one that’s only been in her care for barely more than a month, more than Joyce Byers. 

He loves her for it. 

He wonders how much she’s gonna hate him when he tells her what’s going on.

Steve shoves the Family Video vest off of his lap and gets himself out of his car. He has a shift that starts at 2 with Robin so they had to do this in the morning. His limbs feel stiff in the dew sodden air as he tucks his hands in his jean pockets and walks up the front steps. He sits down next to her, clunkily.

She offers the pack to him, and he shakes his head. No matter how much he likes Joyce, he’s not up for smoking with her. He imagines that would be the same emotional experience as smoking with his Nonna had been when he was 8 and that was a no go. 

“Good.” is the first thing she says to him, taking one for herself and throwing the pack onto the side table. The lighter follows after it’s lit.

“So… how was yesterday? El was well worn out last night when she got home, I barely got her to show me her new clothes before she went to bed.”

So she didn’t tell Joyce about going to the lab today. 

Jeez. There goes Steve’s easy way out.

“Uh, it was good! I think the girls had a good day in the end.”

“That’s… good.” Joyce affirms him with a tap on the knee, “Did **you** have a good time?”

And Steve thinks about it. Because he didn’t really didn’t think about that after he got home last night, he was too wrapped up in El’s vow of “Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.” It still rings in his ears.

“Yeah, I did. It, uh, was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but I’m glad I could be there for El and Max.” Steve forces himself to relax his hand from where it was wrapped around the hem of his shirt.

Joyce nods, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth away from him in a way that’s distinctly mom-like (despite having just offered him a whole cigarette). She sits back against the back of the loveseat, crossing her legs at the ankles, and looks over at him.

“It was just a trip out to the one near Delphi, right? No bumps in the road?”

Her eyes are round and wide, like they always are. They never fail to drill themselves right into him like an auger through ice when she questions him.

And he doesn’t know what to say. Because there were… bumps. But not really any physical ones.

“Mrs. Byers… You do know that Max’s brother is out at the lab right now?”

Her eyes turn down at the outside edges as the cigarette comes up to her mouth again, fingers splayed, “Mhmm? Doc Owens mentioned it when he dropped off El’s new paperwork. He let us know that we should stop by to get a quick checkup for Will sometime over the next few months while he’s in town. Why?”

That makes sense.

“Ah… well. Max has been spending a lot of time out there since she won’t have as much when school starts and… We had to stop out there to pick her up.” Joyce’s head is nodding, a little confused so Steve pushes onwards, “Me **and** El.”

Joyce intakes a sharp breath, and looks away from him for a second, “Oh. Wow, Steve… That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do…” And Steve knows that. 

“We didn’t go in or anything, just waited outside for Max. El… she did good.”

Joyce nods.

“She’s an incredibly strong little girl. I’ve known that since she helped us save Will.” Steve can still envision her cradling a tiny, crying El in her arms like Nancy described, both of them soaked in salt water. But she shakes her head. 

“And they’re not little anymore either… I’ve got to stop thinking like that. They’re all going to be high school age in less than a month… But Will lost so much of himself to… and El…”

Joyce trails off and God, she looks so sad. And Steve gets it. They all act so young, so naive, despite everything they’ve gone through. Or maybe because of it. High school is going to be rough for them, even with good support.

Steve places a light hand on her forearm.

“Mrs. Byers?”

She flinches a tiny bit, “Sorry, what’s up, honey?”

His stomach turns over once, sour and still. But he doesn’t feel the need to run.

“... Last night El told me she wanted to go see Billy today, and I agreed to take her. With Max. But I… I don’t know who to be or how to be enough. Or what to do if she… if she struggles with being in there after...”

And to his surprise, after he runs out of words to phrase his lack of confidence, Joyce laughs. It’s not a mocking laugh, just a little sad, mostly disbelieving, but she doesn’t seem surprised at all by what he’s said.

“That’s just like her, marching forward while the rest of us are still reeling back...” 

Her hand goes up to push some baby hairs off of her forehead from where they’ve fallen out of the dark blue wrap on her head, pressing into the skin there with pale fingertips for a moment. 

Her expression morphs in front of his eyes as she sinks into thought, and then she nods.

“If El asked you to take her into the lab of all places, I think she knows you’ll be enough. Just as you are.” A pause, the hand holding the cigarette coming down to tap his where it’s still on her forearm, “Her asking alone probably means that you don’t have to be like anyone else for her to trust you. You’ll be okay.”

Steve’s eyes are welling up, not enough to spill over but just enough to shimmer in the morning light. He wonders if she would say the same thing knowing how much of a coward he’s been the past few days. If she would be able to help with that, too. It’s probably unfair, but she’s the only person who knows how it feels to have lost someone they… care about, to the Mindflayer.

He tries to think of a way to phrase his connection to Billy in a digestible way that won’t make her hate him, but suddenly the front door is opening and Joyce is flicking her cigarette away from them with a surprising amount of force (and distance!) and Steve is wiping at his eyes. 

“Are you sad?” He looks up and sees El, the space between her brows crinkling at his state.

“No, I’m not sad. Not at all.” He smiles up at her and it’s real, and she seems to see it. She has her backpack in her hand by it’s hook handle, now swinging again. “Ready to head out?”

“Breakfast?”

“I already ate, but you can go back in and grab something if you’re hungry?” 

But Joyce stands and waves them both inside, El heading in towards the fridge. But Steve pauses and turns at the doorway when Joyce turns back around. She puts her pointer finger up to her lips when she pockets the cigarettes into her baggy sweatpants (which hide them perfectly). 

(Evidently the kids were trying to get her to quit again.)

\---

They get onto the road out to Max’s pretty on target, having called her on the walkie last night and letting her know that they’d be there around nine. El has an Eggo PB&J in her hands, a bit of strawberry jam leaking out onto her hands as she wolfs it down.

“Hey, take a minute to breathe, it’s not gonna run away. Why don’t you have one o’ these?” He emphasizes to her with a slice of golden delicious apple that Joyce was nice enough to chop up and put into a Tupperware on their way out of the door. 

El was already in the car with her backpack and breakfast while Steve waited in the front hall, and as Joyce handed off the container (with a little packet of crackers and a banana on top) she said to try to get El to slow down. She had phrased it like El started to eat faster again since Hopper disappeared and Steve got what she was trying to say easily enough.

El takes the offered apple slice with little pouting, waffle sandwich now resting on the wax paper laid out on her lap. She sighs a tiny bit and nibbles on her slice of apple, crispness loud in the quiet of the car.

“Steve…”

He sends a look over to her after he makes a turn, “Mhmm?”

“My question made you really scared when I asked yesterday. I don’t know if I should try to ask it again.” 

Steve has a little sigh for himself, but he answers without any hesitation, “I am scared, El. But you can ask. I won’t cut you off, I’m sorry I did that, yesterday.”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean to. We were both scared. Yesterday.”

They give a little nod at each other, and Steve braces himself, just a little.

“Why are you scared to see Billy, Steve?”

There it is. And he’s been thinking about it, thought about it all last night before bed. Why he’s scared.

“Me and Billy… we had…” Steve bites his tongue. Makes him think _’How did you already screw it up? That was only five words?’_

“We **have** a complicated relationship. It’s not really like anything else you’ve seen or experienced, El. And I’m scared that seeing him in the hospital might make me feel different about him.” 

His words are slow and plodding. Probably because he’s trying not to provide her with too many extraneous details that might confuse her. Or to say the wrong thing.

“But… you two were friends? Billy needed a friend.”

And that’s interesting to Steve. Because Billy always had “friends”. But Steve supposed that it was the same situation as him in his Junior year. 

_'A friend to all is a friend to none.'_

“Yes, we were, bu- wait. What made you think that Billy “needed a friend”- is that something Max told you? Because Billy had plenty of friends, kiddo.”

And El’s pausing. Thinking. 

“Billy showed me when he was fighting against the Mindflayer, trying to find a way out. He was convinced no one really cared. And Billy- Billy’s like me. His papa wasn’t nice to him. His mama either, she didn’t even try to fight like Mama did for me.” 

El’s throat bobs as she swallows, and Steve doesn’t know if he should say anything in the pause, but she continues before he can make a decision.

“And he never got a Jim, someone to care about him when he needed it. His mind felt cold. Alone.”

Steve’s car is rolling to a stop in front of the Mayfield house, her words rolling over his mind in the exact same way.

Because he knew.

He knew Billy was being hurt by someone, but he had no idea who at the time. It didn’t click until three weeks ago when Max got home from the hospital and told the Party what happened to her and eventually that Susan was going through with the divorce proceedings. 

Billy was so volatile, would never have admitted it then, would never even come close to it with Steve. But. He hadn’t meant to make him feel that he was alone. 

If Billy had come to him he would’ve helped him, like he always did, would’ve never turned him away, but Billy was so stubborn. Steve thought he needed some time to figure things out… Stupid. He felt so stupid. 

“El… I’m so sorry you had to see that. But yes, Billy and I were friends and you have to know that I feel so **horrible** about what happened to him. I had no idea what he was really going through back in June when we stopped… talking.” 

And that’s all he really can say on it. There’s nothing he can do to change it. Make her unsee it. Go back in time to take away all of Billy’s pain, prevent it from ever happening to begin with. 

Or to just shake himself from two months ago and tell him to be fucking smarter for once.

He would if he could, in a second. Pull a straight-up Marty McFly. 

But he can’t. 

The pause stretches a little as they wait, El eventually finishing her apple slice in the interim. The crunching brings him back down to earth. She has a drink from the water bottle that’s in the cup-holder before speaking again.

“I don’t know exactly what happened back in June between you two, but he cared about you. He did. You hurt each other. But he still cared, I felt it... It was like... a little ember.” 

Steve can see it, a measly pile of coals dying in the middle of a cold, damp, dark cave. 

“I **know** you don’t need to be scared of Billy, not anymore.”

El reaches over and takes another slice of apple completely of her own volition, taking a bite and waving at Max with a smile when she notices her on the porch talking to her mom.

That’s what makes Steve tear up in the end. 

He’s 2 for 2 today, time to strike out.

\---

The ride over is nice, for lack of a better descriptor in Steve’s swirling mind. The morning breeze is feeding through the car, windows down with the beginnings of humidity prickling on their skin. It’s one thing he appreciates about small towns, the clean air. 

It reminds him of when he was forced to go to Indianapolis with his father back in June and the oppressive air, thick with smog, had felt just a little too much like the tunnels underneath Hawkins to his lungs for his liking. He had spent as little time outside as possible.

He doesn’t feel the need to turn on the radio.

Max is in a quiet mood, sketchbook in her lap and pencil in her hand, looking like she’s doing some shading (probably because the roads out here are new and don’t jostle her around much). 

Her hair is down for the first time in a long time and it feels normal. Like they’re just driving to the next town over to meet up with the boys at the local Bowl-A-Rama. 

It’s too normal.

El’s much the same, trying to seem calm. But he can feel it, the electricity of anxiety in the air as they get closer and closer. No matter how much they both try to reassure each other that there’s nothing to be scared about, he knows it’s probably starting to get to her. 

The contradictory excitement and fear is relatable. Steve still wishes he could take the stress from her, stack it on top of his, nice and easy.

-

El closes her door with a little more force than necessary and strides ahead of them across the veranda, stopping starkly right before the final concrete slab line like a children’s toy battery dying. 

The physicality of it reminds Steve of the games of “step on a crack, it’ll break your mother’s back” he played as a kid. He’s about to say it when he remembers El would have no idea what in the world he’s talking about.

Max goes around her, holding up her ID card to the sensor. It’s just a little black box, but eventually a light on it flashes green and Steve hears a female voice from the speaker say, “Hey Max, perfect timing! Be sure to check in with Doc Owens before going to see Billy, he’s in his office and has some updates for you.” Max agrees, and after a few seconds Steve hears a mechanism in the door in front of them click.

Steve is looking around for obvious cameras, even turns his head around to look behind him, but there are none he can see. 

Max is smiling back at him a little teasingly when he rights his head forwards. She waves her ID at him as she hefts the door open, “My name shows up on the paging unit on her desk.”

“Oh, high tech.”

Steve holds the door open wider after Max walks in, the air conditioning racing out into the heavy morning air. El reacts when it hits her a few feet away, nose wrinkling, and he suddenly realizes that it probably smells the same as when she… lived here. It’s an odd thing to think about, but it makes sense. 

He goes back in his mind to his grandmother’s house, still clear as day, every single time their housekeeper breaks out the Sgrassatore Lavender. Still envisions the weeks on end he’d spent as a young child in her home, which was little more than a cottage, his tiny bedroom tucked away safely in the back. He’d run through the garden along the side of the house, plucking tiny cherry tomatoes and eating them hot off the vine. They’d have dinner at her little kitchen table, Hollywood Squares playing quietly on the black and white TV in the living room, while she listened to him with real smiles and encouraging nods as he rambled on and on about his friends and sports and anything at all. They’d always had to get bundled up and ride in her car for a long time to get to school in the morning, but he hadn’t minded at all because she was always there waiting for him when he’d walk out at the end of the day.

He had just drank in the scent and sensation of being genuinely loved and wanted for as long as possible, the feelings all tactile and circular around him, even now. Like he somehow already knew at six years old that his parents didn’t **really** care about him like his classmate’s parents did and he needed to save the love for when he’d really need it most.

Nonnina’s been dead for nearly a decade. 

It makes Steve think that maybe that kind of memory is something that just doesn’t leave you. 

It’s probably the same for El. 

But hers are painful, horrific memories that he’ll never actually be able to comprehend.

He smiles and nods for her, in spite of everything, genuine and encouraging, reaching out. She crosses the concrete line and takes his hand easily, forever braver than he’ll ever be. El moves to grip at his forearm as they walk in together. Max smiles at her, too, from where she’s leaning against the wall next to an open door a few yards from them. El returns the smiles, eyes darting to both of them, despite her rigidity.

The first thing that Steve notices about the inside of the lab is that they’ve dimmed half of the fluorescents since the last time he drove up close to the building a few weeks ago. That was when Max had just… gotten? experienced? her head injury, and Steve agreed with her mother that she should pause on skateboarding for a few days for her equilibrium to heal so she didn’t hurt herself worse.

The two of them follow Max into the office, and Dr. Owens is writing on a thick stack of papers clipped and looped back onto a wooden clipboard as he leans back in his desk chair, glasses balanced on the end of his nose. Somehow he looks even older than he did a month ago, and Steve knows it’s rude to think that way. 

Like. Somehow even with Billy being comatose he’s aged him.

_That’s rough, buddy. Been there._

Steve takes a second to look around the room. It’s pretty sterile, standard issue stuff with metal filing cabinets but also a large orange rug on the ground and two comfy looking chairs are staggered in front of his desk. The only light in the room came from the windows, two large floor lamps, and a desk lamp. No burning fluorescents. Steve wonders why, what the logic is. But it’s not important enough to ask about.

“Oh, hello, Max! Great to see you again, I have some good n- oh, I see you brought a guest!” He moves to roll around his desk, emphasizing with his hand when he sees Steve behind her. Steve moves to pull his clearance letter from his vest pocket when he hears Owens gasp. It’s not loud or anything, barely more than a slightly sharper intake of breath, but it makes Steve look up. Owens' expression when he notices El is there is fascinating, to say the least.

The last time he saw the three of them together all of them were emotionally drained in the middle of a mall with a huge dead goo monster and a less-huge dead boy. 

Steve gets it. El seems to, too.

“Hello, Doctor Owens. Thank you for helping us, and helping Billy. For being good when you didn’t have to be good.”

Owens collects himself surprisingly fast at El’s words, it makes Steve wonder if Owens has kids himself.

“Of course, Jane.”

El’s hand tightens on Steve’s forearm. Steve reaches over and taps his free hand onto her fingers.

“Please, call me El.” Dr. Owens eyes widen the tiniest bit before he nods.

“Understood. Feel free to call me Doc, or Sam, or Owens, or Hey you!, whatever works,” He moves his eye contact from El to Steve like it’s some sort of grown up joke, “You see as much as I have without going crazy and you get over that overdone neurologist ego real fast.”

Steve nods, and feels El do the same. 

It made complete sense, even though Steve hadn’t even realized how intertwined Owens was with all of them. Hopper respected him after everything that happened last fall, and he made sure everyone involved knew that Owens was trustworthy. Mostly with the insinuation that if something were to happen to him, Owens would help keep everyone together. 

And that was something Joyce in particular took to heart, the next day she was on the phone with him getting El’s new papers, just in case, so there would be no legal problems if something else happened. For him, and for El.

Hopper was still protecting them, even now.

Max clears her throat in the pause and turns back to Dr. Owens. 

“Ingrid said you had an update about Billy for me? I don’t mind if El and Steve are in here too, if you think it’s appropriate, or whatever...” 

While she’s attempting to look casual and unaffected, one hand tucking away into the pockets of her shorts and the other curling around her backpack strap, Steve can tell she’s a little keyed up. Evidently this was new, a first sign of change.

“Sure, of course, that’s fine, it’s generally good news,” Owens hand directs in front of him to the pair of cushioned chairs in front of his desk as he looks away, grabbing a nearby pair of manila envelopes. Max takes the closest chair, and Steve directs El towards the other one, standing by her side. Steve folds his arms, crossing low across the front of him, and settles his weight onto one hip.

Once they’re settled, Owens flips the folder open. The first thing inside of the first envelope is a few images that Steve can identify as brain scans. They make him feel a little squirmy inside, so foreign yet so familiar. 

That’s him, all of him, packed away in a clean, uniform letter size sheet of paper. 

It’s so wrong.

Steve can’t tell because he hasn’t seen any of the previous scans, but Max gasps once she sees them. Owens is nodding, an encouraging smile emerging. 

“Billy’s been reacting to mild external pain like blood sugar checks through muscle reactions and his eye movement when in REM sleep has returned for at least three weeks, as you know. Which, in the simplest terms, is a sign that his mind is still at a reasonable operational capacity and is not in a vegetative state due to his trauma. Yesterday afternoon, after you left, we had him in the lift to change the sheets, and Nurse Olsen noted that there was a vestibular reaction for the first time. We hurr-”

“And what exactly does that mean? A v-vestibular reaction?” Steve is enraptured, and he doesn’t want to get lost, swept along like he sometimes gets. Dr Owens doesn’t look offended at the interruption, nodding along while he listens.

“That means that as he was lifted his equilibrium was disrupted, and there was enough subconscious presence of mind that his body attempted to right itself. It was a weak movement, but it was a definite balance related movement. Does that make sense?”

“Totally.” If Dr Owens had been his Anat Phys teacher junior year maybe he’d have gotten better than a D+.

“So, after the movement, we rushed and got a PET scan going. And based on these changes-” 

Owens opens the other envelope and pulls out another set of scans. Steve sees they’re labeled 5 July 1985 and 22 July 1985 in the upper corners. Compared to the new set from yesterday, they’re dark, blue and black and cold purples and greens. The new set has so many fiery reds and oranges and yellows. 

Steve understands now why Max gasped.

“Now, we can’t be sure yet, but based on this data it seems that his treatment has been somewhat successful. And even this morning, when we removed his hand bandaging and left him to his own devices, there was muscle movement, to the extent of him actively curling and uncurling his fingers twice.” 

Owens imitates the motion he’d described with his own hands, slow and weak but obviously purposeful as they move in tandem. They fold together on the desk after that, Owens going silent for a moment. Steve can feel the three of them fixated, staring like they’d just seen Billy do it, trying to envision the Billy he and El had last seen, lying still on cold tile, body and mind ravaged. 

Three heads jerk up when Owens speaks again. “It was quite remarkable to see.” 

“In simple terms, Billy is showing signs of both wakefulness and awareness, which are both great things considering his starting condition.”

When Steve looks over to Max, her eyes are awe-widened. He moves to stand behind both girls, feeling not unlike a bodyguard. He gently touches Max’s shoulder in a way he hopes she finds comforting and she doesn’t flinch, just leans back into the touch. He thinks that maybe she’s in a little bit of shock, he can’t imagine the feeling. That seems to be a common trait of his lately.

“Do you have any questions at all?” Owens turns to Max first before looking at both El and Steve, expression open.

“I…” 

Max doesn’t say anything, mouth just falling into a little “o”.

“How long do you think it will take for him to wake up? Realistically?” 

Steve doesn’t know where that comes from, it just bubbled out of him, unbidden. He knows that it’s what they’re all thinking, deep down, even if Owens can’t give them an answer, he **had** to ask.

It’s so out of left field that El’s head turns back to look over her shoulder at him in that slightly robotic anxious way that hasn’t left her since they walked in. Steve can tell she’s deep in thought, normally wide eyes narrowed, but he doesn’t have time to even attempt to psychoanalyze her.

“It’s… not always like it is on TV. It’s not always immediately all or nothing…”

The concentration in Owens’ eyes grows, and Steve knows he’s being gentle with phrasing for them, but especially for Max.

“The analogy I use for non-vegetative patients is to envision walking through a haunted house. You know there’s always a door in and a door out, with little surprises between the start and end. You’re not always screaming, and you’re not always silent.” 

“In Billy’s case, it’s hard to give you an exact estimate. He could be in this phase of recovery for days, weeks, months. We have nothing to compare him to, and comas due to physical trauma, in general, are incredibly fickle. They follow no one’s timeline except their own.” 

Owens is incredibly serious, probably the most serious Steve has seen him. 

And he watched him pump syringes into a dead person barely over a month ago.

“But the thing we do know is the psychological power of emotional support. It is paramount that you all stay as calm as you can in his presence. If you hear him make noises or even pieces of words, try to understand that he likely will not be completely present yet. If you see him making small movements, feel free to gently touch in a way that encourages the muscle movement. Not invasively, mind you. If anything seems off otherwise, there are call buttons near his bed and near the door of his room. Max knows where they are and can point them out to you two. Both of them will notify the nurse’s station and my office immediately.”

Steve understands on the surface, of course it’s nice sentimentally, but the practicality is escaping him. It seems oxymoronic to be pushing both sides so hard. “If he’s not actually there, what difference does it make?” 

“It makes all the difference. I understand it seems unproductive, and I have my theories as to how the possession impacted his physical healing, but the truly difficult part of this will no doubt be the emotional healing. That will be on Billy and the people who care about him, not some interdimensional abomination.” 

The deep lines in Owens’ forehead furrow up when he pauses, “This is really what being human is about, what makes him human now, and what made him human even when he was under the Mindflayer’s influence. Every human desires meaningful, stable, connections. For most people in his position, when they’re comatose, it is the longest amount of time in their lives when they don’t experience meaningful touch or communication from the people who care about them.” 

“Now is the time, when we don’t exactly know how far he is in his walk through the darkness, to make him feel that it’s worth the pain to cross his finish line and come back to us. So we can really help him.”

The look El shoots Steve over her shoulder, again, feels like an arrow piercing through his heart.

\---

The rest of the meeting is pretty brief, El and Steve accepting their own clearance cards from Owens before they all collect themselves and make their way down the hall. Owens says he’ll be accompanying them in a minute once he puts away his paperwork, saying that he needs to do the mid-morning check. Max takes El’s arm when they both stand, and she leads the three of them further into the building.

Max greets Ingrid as they walk past her desk, introducing Steve and El as friends who were also at the Starcourt disaster. Steve smiles for her, nudging El to raise her free hand politely. She’s pretty even in frumpy hospital garb, probably in her early-mid 20s, curvy with white-blonde hair in a high ponytail that curls out at the ends. She seems nice, is welcoming to them and seems familiar to Max. 

Owens catches up with them then, and lets Ingrid know that he’s doing “the 10 AM a few minutes early”.

As they follow the corridor it seems to get longer and longer, Steve walking out in front of the other three when the girls, now arm in arm, slow to ask Owens a question about brains, talking about a supervillain that he thinks they called Brainiac, but he can’t focus anymore because he hears it. 

The beeping.

It pulls him forward by the nose, even when he knows he should be paying attention to El. When he looks back she’s completely fine, leaning into Max, safe and occupied.

The sound of it is slow, steady, strong. A caress to his ears. 

It gets louder and louder as he walks faster, Nikes squeaking as he turns into the open door, crescendos. And then it’s gone.

When he sees Billy, it’s silent.

No beeping, none of the girls talking behind him.

Nothing.

He looks… like Billy.

And that surprises Steve. Because the last time, Billy had looked nothing like the person he knew. He had looked disembodied, a desperate soul swimming around in his too-big body. 

But this Billy in front of Steve, he’s there. Steve can feel it, with each (independent!) breath Billy takes. It’s like he’s just sleeping. 

Like one of those early mornings in the late spring where they were laying out on the hood of the Beemer together, and Billy would start (unwillingly) dozing after an alcohol soaked all-nighter. 

The only difference was that there was no snuffly snoring, but Billy always denied that anyways.

(Steve thought it was endearing, for the record.)

He’s wrapped and covered up, a little paler and skinnier, and his hair is creeping down over his shoulders now, but he is Billy. 

Heart and soul.

Steve comes back into himself when he feels his lip tremble, and Owens’ hand touches his shoulder just as he does. His look of concern is comforting, it’s not something he sees on the adults in his life very often. “Son?” 

Max and El, where they’re setting down their backpacks at a long cushioned bench curved along the wall to the left of Billy’s bed, look over to him with twin intensities. It makes him feel a bit like a zoo animal, just stuck in a cage with all of his unkempt emotions that he normally doesn’t have to deal with and it just… it sucks.

“No, no, I’m good. I don’t know what I was expecting but… he looks like Billy. All in one piece Billy,” Steve swallows down the lump in his throat, painful and dry, but it keeps him from crying and that’s all that matters. 

“You did good, Doc.”

That makes Owens smile, hand clapping around Steve’s shoulder more firmly.

“I appreciate that, we’re still working hard. Glad to have you aboard.” Owens looks to El, “Both of you.”

He nods self-affirmatively and his hand releases from Steve’s shoulder. Steve does what he can to try to seem unaffected until he turns from him. Owens walks towards Billy’s IV tower to replace a bag that is nearly empty, and Max asks a question about the solution in the new bag on the medical tray, a clear fluid that’s somewhat viscous and tinted light blue. 

El, still so much quieter than she is normally, looks between the contrasting scenes in front of her for a moment. 

Steve, stockstill just inside the door, just looking at Billy. 

Max and Dr. Owens going on together as if this is completely normal. 

She’s stuck in the middle, swirling in between the high and low pressure, completely tornadic.

So she cuts through it and walks towards Steve, pulling him to where she and Max are going to be sitting. He sits down awkwardly, robotically, as he continues to look at Billy. 

El takes his hand, and it breaks the spell a little. 

He looks down to where her small hand is gripping his, her knuckles white with the tension in her. For some reason, it really comforts him. This is the easy part, normal. 

_A pretty shitty boyfriend, but a damn good babysitter._

“How ya doin, kiddo?” His voice rasps on the first word, but he’s able to get it out the first time. He leans back and takes a breath, pushing out calming vibes for the both of them.

El pauses, face extremely contemplative in a way that makes her look older than she is. She also doesn’t spout out “I’m Fine!” like most people would.

“I… it’s harder than last time.” Her voice is small, but not necessarily afraid. “I’m happy Billy is doing better. I’m happy that Max can see her brother getting better. And it looks so different. But I can still feel it.”

Steve understands. He doesn’t really know how he would feel going back to that underground Russian bunker where he was tortured. And that was for barely a day.

“Just so you know, the second you want to leave, we’ll go, no questions asked. Just give me a salute and we’ll be on our way. And I know people tell you this all the time, but you are the bravest kid I know, and I know lots of brave people. And I think Billy would be so grateful to see that you’re here for Max.”

“And for him.”

“Of course for Billy, too. I can just hear him, “She was so badass!” Steve elbows into her side teasingly and El finally smiles. 

It’s just a small grin and a little puff of air from her nose as she leans away from the onslaught, but the way she leans back and lays her head lightly along his shoulder makes him feel better. Like he was able to do something.

  
Her body next to him on the bench gradually relaxes a little more as she listens to Owens and Max talk about the cycle of medication that Billy is officially being transitioned over to being “a full month post-injury.”

By the time Owens finishes up his checks and IV swaps, it’s nearing eleven (going by the clock on the wall, Steve had forgotten his watch in his panic this morning). The room isn’t huge, but on the wall across from where he and El are sitting, there’s a panel window facing east with its sunshade halfway up. Max pulls a chair from where it sits, near said window, up to Billy’s bedside and she sits down in it, taking a shaky breath before giving Billy’s hand a gentle touch where it’s resting along his side. 

The air in the room feels vacuum sealed for a few seconds. After everything, there are expectations that shouldn’t be there. 

But. Billy doesn’t react. And the balloon pops. 

Steve isn’t disappointed, truly. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Billy did react. If he woke up. But he also doesn’t know if that’s something that improves with time or simply cannot be prepared for. 

He considers himself lucky in that he’s pretty much a roll with the punches kind of person.

There’s a modest wall-mounted TV pointed directly at Billy’s bed next to the open-door, but Max ignores the remote on the bedside table to turn on a small radio. It’s quiet, right in the middle of some sort of 70s soft rock song. The more Steve focuses on it to try to identify it the more he can’t, beyond knowing it’s something off The Eagles first album. They all run together for him anyway.

He only comes back to himself when El is reaching over him to grab Max’s backpack and throwing it into her waiting hand a few feet away, over Billy’s legs. Steve feels sheepish when he realizes that he hyper fixated again and completely ignored her asking for her bag. 

_What did Robin say to do…_

He shakes his head out, taking stock. 

One - Sight. Max’s hair, haloing where it filters the morning sun beaming in behind her, throws orange-red flames onto the white walls, white sheets, white everything. Even across Billy’s pale face, a line crossing right over his lips and chin.

Two - Smell. Clean, astringent, rubbing alcohol and disposable plastic. But also one of the girls is wearing some type of perfume or body spray, fruity like artificial apple, and it’s strong from recent application. Probably Max, but it could be El for all Steve knows.

Three - Taste. Peanut butter. That damn peanut butter that just won’t leave. He needs to ask El for a drink from her water bottle to get rid of it, but it just didn’t seem important when… everything else was going on.

Four - Touch. El’s leg is pressed up against his, keeping him from wiggling it because it would also jostle her. The cushion under his hand is pretty plush for what it is, but the cover is a little coarse and itchy in its newness and disuse.   
And mostly reminds him of church benches, from when he would go with his grandmother.

Five - Sound. The music, yes, but also Billy’s breathing. Steve never thought about it before now, but it seems to him like we’re socialized to breathe as quietly as possible. And when you’re comatose that isn’t really a thing. It’s not like it’s a loud noise, but it’s definitely more noticeable. 

Billy’s barely recovered lungs and diaphragm have a gravel on the out breath that was never there before, and his throat has a rasp on the end of the breath that he suspects is from having a ventilator stuck down it for an extended period of time. He lets his own heart settle to it for a minute. It’s still the steadiest, most solid breathing he’s ever heard out of Billy, (hopefully?) at the lowest point of his life, and that’s so incredibly sad. He’s not panting on the basketball court or holding it violently inside to stay silent through the pain of bruised ribs.

Steve can see Billy, the Billy he knew and the Billy he didn’t, safe, just like this. Except they’re all the same person.

He matches his own to it for a few beats and just is. There with the three of them, feeling more anchored into his body than he has since the beginning of summer.

-

It’s a little after noon when Max decides to read aloud again. 

It’s the same story as yesterday in the car, and El is still enthralled with it, absentmindedly shoveling Ritz Bits into her mouth as she concentrates. Steve takes the packet of crackers and El can’t fight it while her mouth is densely coated in cracker crumbs and doesn’t want to interrupt Max, but the look in her eyes is hilarious to Steve. 

He decides he’s lived with the peanut butter’s corpsey remnants in his mouth long enough, and pours out a handful of the little cheese crackers before passing the bag back to the affronted El. 

Steve too starts snacking, but prominently makes eye contact with her as he puts one in his mouth at a time. She watches for a short moment before mirroring. No words necessary, all while still paying attention to Max. 

It still amazes him how intuitive she is to body language. 

(And Steve is proud that he was smart enough to get her to take a break from throwing them back like she hasn’t eaten in months without making her feel bad.)

Max is none the wiser of their little weird antics as she walks slow loping figure eights at the foot of the bed. 

Her emphasis is a little more pointed each time her sandaled foot touches the floor, but otherwise her voice is just as soothing as it was from the back of the car, occasionally dropping low in concentration. 

///

_"My father wrote beautifully," Esme interrupted. "I'm saving a number of his letters for posterity."_

_I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chronographic-looking wristwatch again. I asked if it had belonged to her father._

_She looked down at her wrist solemnly. "Yes, it did," she said. "He gave it to me just before Charles and I were evacuated." Selfconsciously, she took her hands off the table, saying, "Purely as a memento, of course." She guided the conversation in a different direction._

_"I'd be extremely flattered if you'd write a story exclusively for me sometime. I'm an avid reader."_

_I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn't terribly prolific._

_"It doesn't have to be terribly prolific! Just so that it isn't childish and silly.” She reflected. “I prefer stories about squalor.”_

_"About what?" I said, leaning forward. "Squalor. I'm extremely interested in squalor."_

_I was about to press her for more details, but I felt Charles pinching me, hard, on my arm. I turned to him, wincing slightly. He was standing right next to me. "What did one wall say to the other wall?" he asked, not unfamiliarly._

_"You asked him that," Esme said. "Now, stop it."_

_Ignoring his sister, and stepping up on one of my feet, Charles repeated the key question. I noticed that his necktie knot wasn't adjusted properly. I slid it up into place, then, looking him straight in the eye, suggested, "Meetcha at the corner?"_

_The instant I'd said it, I wished I hadn't. Charles' mouth fell open. I felt as if I'd struck it open. He stepped down off my foot and, with white-hot dignity, walked over to his own table, without looking back._

_"He's furious," Esme said. "He has a violent temper. My mother had a propensity to spoil him. My father was the only one who didn't spoil him."_

_I kept looking over at Charles, who had sat down and started to drink his tea, using both hands on the cup. I hoped he'd turn around, but he didn't. ‘’_

///

Steve can hear the gears of three minds turning, metal on metal, as Max dog-ears the yellowing, worn book. She nearly tiptoes and sits down on the edge of her chair, shuffling through the soft worn pages.

It makes Steve give a little almost-sad smile, leaning forward to graze the tips of his fingers along the hair on the back of Billy’s forearm, not even daring to touch his skin, “Charles reminds me a little bit of someone else we know.”

That makes Max pfft out some air from her nose, a step away from a laugh, a little smile spreading on her face, “He’s definitely just as all or nothing. 0 or 110.”

Didn’t Steve know it… Billy was always a little too petulant for his own good.

El says, in that little fascinated voice that she rarely uses anymore, “Maybe I can help him turn around…”

Steve can’t really comprehend what she means by that. Max speaks first.

“What do you mean, El? You said your powers were weakened since Starcourt.”

“They are, the…” Her hands open and close, crinkling the cracker packet still clenched between her fingers. “The moving things part. But I haven’t tried, haven’t had a reason to… To go to The Void, this part-” She lifts her free hand to point at her temple, “Since Billy. Died.”

It makes sense, but it’s been over a month. The fact that she hasn’t tried is wild to Steve, he feels like if he had telekinetic powers he’d be using them constantly. But he guesses that it’s the same as how much of how he relates to El, as cool as her powers are, they probably have painful resonances in her mind that he can’t imagine. And he knows that having something for your whole life makes it less interesting to you and you think about it differently than someone just introduced to it.

Something like that. 

“I’ve wondered if Billy has something to do with it. The last time I was at full power was just before I joined him in his mind, his safe space. It was at a beach, when he was little.”

Max nods, “Before he and his father moved in with us they lived super close to Coronado. I know Billy spent a lot of time there when he was young, less so when he got older. He took me along with his friends a few times in the early days. It was- uh... surprisingly fun. Mostly to be around all of the big kids and actually feel included.” 

Steve imagines a young Billy, what he imagines he’d looked like around 13, dragging an even younger Max along. It makes his heart hurt. Even if his father was forcing him to do it all the way back then, if Max had fun that meant he probably tried hard for her to be a good brother before it got rough.

“Owens said he has some degree of consciousness right now, like what he said about Billy not being vegetative.” Max swallows, makes Steve notice that it’s one of her more prominent ticks, “If you’re comfortable with it, I think it’s worth trying, El.”

El nods to Max. They both look to him, both expressions somewhere between asking for permission and asking for guidance and Steve doesn’t really feel equipped to provide either.

So, instead, he asks, “What could go wrong?”

El pauses, eyes intense, “Nothing. If I can’t enter his mind then nothing will happen. I’ll just get rejected. With him right here, in a better time, it would be so easy…” Her eyes drag to Billy where he lays and soften instantly, like a switch was flicked.

“If it works, I’ll take stock of his mind, where he’s at. Try to help him. Really just get him to turn around, like I said.”

And to be honest, Steve knows it’s a risk to let her do it, but if he’s honest, it’s a much more safe and calculated one than any of the things he’s let the kiddos do in the past. There’s no safer place to do it, with Owens less than 50 feet away in his office, and Steve saw Billy’s brain scans. There’s no sign of anything malicious being in there with him. 

Not anymore. 

Steve takes a deep breath, chest cavity expanding to its max before letting it sigh out from him.

“I have work in less than two hours. If you think you can do it in that time, we can /// **try**.///”

The girls spring into action in a way that’s a little surprising for how intense their attentiveness to him had just been. If Steve knew better, he would swear that it was coordinated. Or practiced.

Max immediately reaches over and tunes the bedside radio to static, while El digs into her backpack and pulls a black bandana with white paisley out from the bottom of it.

“Form and fashion?”

El rolls her eyes in a way that looks far too much like Mike as she rolls the bandana a few times. Steve elbows her before moving to stand a few feet away, close to the doorway. Just in case. Max comes to sit beside El at her elbow, and El nods to the both of them before wrapping and tying the bandana around her eyes.

She reaches forward, cradling Billy’s hand in both of hers.

“Okay.”

\- 

The first thing El notices is how bright this environment is, not the dark watery plane she’s used to. At first the light does remind her of the beach Billy formed for her last time, but this memory is different.

It’s a small room, probably a living room from the looks of it. The walls, the plush carpet beneath her feet, the sofa, and blanket folded along the back of it are all a pure white. The white light streaming in through the large bay window completely cuts off the rest of the world. 

The only amount of colour she can see is from the verdant plants covering every surface and shelf in the room. A look behind her out the door she seemingly just walked through remains a white open void.

From where she stands, the back of the couch is a few feet in front of her. As she moves forward, blond hair appears trailing over the arm of the couch. Slowly sound fades into the environment when she sees it. 

She can hear the ocean, faintly, and someone sniffling. And a little wet cough. Like someone’s sick with a cold. El slowly moves along the side, trying not to interrupt as she attempts to gain more view.

Soon, from the doorway across from the couch, the blonde woman from his past memory walks into the room. She’s in that exact same white dress and says nothing. Like a ghost in one of those creepy midnight movies she and Jim watched earlier in the year. 

Gently, the woman kneels in front of the person on the couch, expression tender and concerned. Her thin hands reach out and rub a substance into the chest of the person lying there. Menthol and eucalyptus assaults El’s nostrils.

A few more silent steps move her parallel to the armrest, and she sees what she came for.

It’s Billy, their Billy. 

Not the child Billy presented to her last time.

Eighteen year old Billy, dressed in a clean version of the white tank top and blue jeans that the end found him in. The same she confronted him in his room in Hawkins. In the bright white of everything, all she can think is that he looks so cold and alone, despite his Mama being inches away.

She touches his cheek, crying, and his own teary eyes look directly to El. 

Like they never were looking anywhere else, didn’t even exist.

He’d been waiting, ready.

“Billy...”

And suddenly, the blonde woman is gone. Like she never was there to begin with, gone along with the scent of menthol and camphor. 

El is in her place standing over him, touching his cheek.

The first word Billy, himself, says to El is, “Gone.”

“No. You’re not gone. You’re here with me.”

Billy’s brow furrows, and he considers it as the seconds drag on. 

El begins to feel the stress on the tether pull.

“You are alive, Billy. Max has been with you every day since the end. She misses you more than you can imagine.”

Some tears trail from the outer corner of Billy’s eyes to his hairline.

“And Steve. He… he cares about you so, so much. He’s in so much pain about how the two of you left things.”

Billy’s eyes squeeze shut, tears flooding, along with the white light around them.

“No, no, Billy, please. Please, he needs you. And Max needs her brother, we all do. I know you’re good, Billy. You belong with us.” El’s other hand wraps around to cup at his face, “Your fight can’t be in vain.”

A few more seconds pass.

“I’ll try.”

“Please.”

Crystal blue confronts her when Billy opens his eyes, swallowing her whole.

“I will.”

And then she’s gone. 

Into the blue.

-

Steve watches El wrestle the bandana from her eyes, breath stolen from her as she throws her arms around Max, tears dropping into red hair. 

He approaches, looking between El and the bed apprehensively, giving her a moment to catch her breath before asking, voice as calm as he can make it given the situation, “El, what happened in there?”

She pulls back an arm and wipes at her eyes and nose with her sleeve.

“He’s in one of his safe places, I hope what I gave him was enough.” Her next breath buffets the air as she breathes in and needs to take a second. “He said he’d try.”

Max is crying silent tears, holding onto El. Steve can practically see her mind swirling in her eyes at this update to her little world, she’s so overwhelmed. 

He is a little bit too, if he’s honest, but there’s no time for that yet.

Steve’s on a mission. El did her part. Max did her part, being with Billy all this time. It’s his turn. Steve walks to Max’s chair where it’s unoccupied on the other side of the bed and sits in it, taking Billy’s hand in his own.

The first thing he notices when his skin touches the other’s is the hiccup to Billy’s breathing. It’s just a little thing, more a lack of sound than a sound in itself, but with his breathing having been so noticeably solid for the past three hours it immediately piques Steve’s ears.

And for good reason. After a few short moments, the tiniest snuffle pattern emerges from his nose that makes Steve feel incredibly nostalgic. Something he thought he’d lost forever. So Steve just runs his right hand up Billy’s arm, and gently grips his shoulder like he used to. 

The microflutter of the dense lashes framing Billy’s eyes in reaction sends a shock down Steve’s spine. They open a few millimeters, and the cerulean depths stare out at him.

The “Steve?” that passes Billy’s dry lips is so close to silent and rasped that it sounds near-ghostly, but Steve couldn't care less about how it sounds. Just that it's in his voice and his voice alone.

"Hi, Billy. It's been a minute, huh?"

He touches the call button with the "huh", before letting the waterworks go. He gently lifts Billy’s hand, and leans down to press his lips to Billy's knuckles as he hears Owens and Ingrid running.

The corners of Billy's lips turn up a tiny bit, before his eyes blink once, twice.

Then close again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 💙💛

**Author's Note:**

> pixielle22 | twitter - pixielle + pixielle-etc (hrrngrv content) | tumblr


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